#Use ipad as mac mini monitor pro
Using an iPad Pro with an external display is far from an ideal experience at this point due, again, to limitations of iOS.Įssentially, iOS mirrors the same content you see on the main iOS device to the bigger screen, but app developers can integrate with the barebones external display API (which has existed since 2012) to show different content on the iOS device and the external display. As I mentioned in the first article of this series, one of my goals over the next year is to use the iPad Pro as a workstation for video and photo editing as well as a console for graphically intensive games thus, finding a compatible USB-C display that tapped into the iPad Pro’s native support for the USB 3.1 Gen. USB-C, on the other hand, can send a native, lossless signal over a compatible cable, with the added benefit of power delivery to charge an iPad from the display and treating the display itself as a hub for other downstream USB devices. Due to its limited bandwidth, Lightning cannot send raw HDMI data through the HDMI adapter, generating latency and causing various video artifacts that have frequently been observed by many in games or other high-performance apps with video-out support. Second, while I could have bought another display and used it as an external monitor for the iPad via HDMI adapters, I didn’t want to run into latency-related issues that have always affected how iOS needs to encode video-out signals to H.264 over Lightning. A compatible USB-C display is the first step to start building that future. A piece of glass that can be a tablet with cellular connectivity, a laptop with a built-in keyboard, or a “desktop” computer that puts iOS on the big screen. I went with the UltraFine 4K for two reasons:įirst, I strongly believe that the future of iPad should be a self-contained computer that can transform from a tablet into a full-fledged workstation depending on what you need to work on.
For context, here’s the key part of the story: I wrote about my decision to buy an UltraFine 4K display and the issues with iOS and external displays back in December. They’re not groundbreaking, but I wanted to include this section at the end of the story for one reason: despite its severe limitations, I still enjoy using the iPad Pro with my UltraFine 4K display.
There have been a couple of additions to my writing workflow since I last wrote about using a 2018 iPad Pro with an external USB-C display.